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MSU grads produce short indie film that pokes fun at dieting

January 25, 2006

MSU alumni Marty Shea and Ian Bonner are making names for themselves in the film business.

Their recent short film "21 Carbs," which Shea and Bonner wrote and directed, has won two awards and been accepted to eight film festivals. They have submitted the film to the East Lansing Film Festival and are waiting to find out if they are accepted, said Shea, a 1998 advertising graduate.

The movie is a satirical look at cutting carbs while dieting.

"21 Carbs" already is going to be screened at the Muskegon Film Festival on Feb. 3. The film has also been invited to compete for Cinequest's 2006 Viewers' Voice Competition. The highest-rated short film will earn a place at the 16th Annual Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, Calif.

The film was shot and produced in the Detroit area and used an entirely local cast and crew. The State News talked to co-writer/director Shea about "21 Carbs."

State News: What is "21 Carbs" about?

Marty Shea: It's a spoof on Alejandro González Iñnárritu's films, like "21 Grams," but really about fad diets. It's about how we treat each other, and people that are different sizes than us, and the media aspects of that. And it's hopefully funny.

SN: How did you get the idea for the film?

MS: For a long time I thought somebody should make a really good movie about the carb thing, and I didn't have any ideas for it. I also started to think of the idea to make a spoof of a movie, and then I saw "21 Grams," and shortly after that I was in a grocery store and somehow this idea came to me.

SN: How did you fund the film and what was your budget?

MS: We got a grant from the Detroit Public Benefit Corp. The producer, Ian Bonner, who co-wrote the film and got the grant, worked on other projects with me through them. The budget for "21 Carbs" was probably under $5,000, and most of the money went to equipment. It was mostly volunteer crew and cast.

SN: Tell me about the actual shooting process.

MS: We shot for four days, and it's the kind of thing where there's rules like if you're gonna make a short film, make it in one place with the same people and no kids, and we broke all those rules. But we really liked this script because it had something to say that was relevant, especially at the time when the carb diet thing was out of control.

SN: What was the biggest obstacle you encountered while making the film?

MS: Finding the grocery store was stressful because very few of them fit the schedule we needed. We spent a lot of time working on it … Another thing, we may be in Detroit and whatever people say about the current acting pool, we didn't let that limit us and we said we're gonna find the best people that fit these roles and we asked everyone we knew to come work on it.

SN: What is the film's strongest point?

MS: I would say with "21 Carbs" the way we made it was really the closest to a real movie of anything I have ever made. It was done with a crew, a director of photography, an assistant director and a schedule that we stuck to. And a real cinematographer — that is huge.

Everyone was friendly and wonderful. The script was served by everything and everything was served by the script, and it clicked and it was beautiful.

SN: What advice would you give current MSU students who want to go into filmmaking?

MS: Everybody's got a different situation and style but I would say, while they can, make something that they want to make if it's just you and your video camera. Don't be afraid to ask other people, real — so to speak — directors of photography and call people in L.A. I've heard crazy stories where people have called some famous director of photography who was like "Oh I'll shoot your short."

SN: What are your future plans for "21 Carbs?"

MS: It's probably nearing the end of its festival run, but there's another batch we might get into. Cinequest is the best. It's online and it reaches a lot of people and the chance to get in is really great. It's more of a people's movie than a committee movie, when it's in front of an audience the laughter spreads. It has a strange sense of humor, it's dramatic and it never tells you it's supposed to be funny. You take a situation and a farcical idea and treat it so dramatically that it just becomes funny.

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